MacDonalds The Princess and the Goblin Essays -- MacDonald Princess G

MacDonalds The Princess and the GoblinThe Princess and the Goblin is a story about self-realisation and the elaboration of limits. The princess, Irene, is able to come to certain conclusions about herself with the help of her grandmother, who lives in the attic upstairs in the palace. The grandmother guides Irene through her rite of passage into adulthood, and helps to bring the princess and Curdie unneurotic in the end. However, the reader never really knows whether the grandmother even outlasts, and it is this uncertainty that causes the reader to question whether she is a personification of a force within Irene that is crusade her to achieve all that she does. There are many elements of faerie tales that exist within the grandmothers world and Irenes relationship with her grandmother and her nurse, Lootie. Archetypes such as the attic, birds, the moon, and fire exist within her grandmothers world and archetypes such as the underground exist within the world she guides Irene th rough. The grandmother embodies characteristics of the good witch with supernatural powers, who guides Irene on her journey, while Lootie embodies characteristics of a wicked witch, who hinders her right of passage into adulthood.Irenes first encounter with her grandmother is one of ambivalence, which parallels the stage of puberty she is in. This is the stage of her journey when she is not sure how far from the galosh of her mother figure, the nurse, she should wander. Irene does not stay very long with her grandmother, as she is not fully ready to leave childhood. There are elements of Charles Perraults Little Red horseback riding Hood and The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood in Irenes first visit with her grandmother. Her discovery of the grandmother is very... ...hat exist in this story follow the fairy tale tradition. The princess is transformed into a young woman with the aid of a helper. This helper is her grandmother, who gives her the tools to cut the invisible thread, and be led by her own powers. The princess discovers some other world beyond her nursery and the walls of the palace that becomes more and more real every time she lets go of someones hand. BibliographyMacDonald, George. The Princess and the Goblin. London Penguin Books Ltd., 1996Perrault, Charles. Little Red Riding Hood. in Folk & Fairy Tales. Eds. Martin Hallett and Barbara Karasek. 2nd edition. Peterborough, Ontario Broadview Press Ltd., 1996. 25-27.Perrault, Charles. The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood. in Folk & Fairy Tales. Eds. Martin Hallett and Barbara Karasek. 2nd edition. Peterborough, Ontario Broadview Press Ltd., 1996. 40-48.